


A Problem Halved

by Rhianne



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post-Overload fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-02
Updated: 2012-06-02
Packaged: 2017-11-06 15:30:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/420409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhianne/pseuds/Rhianne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A post Overload fic. Nick has help trying to work through his feelings after his revelation to Catherine. Gen fic, but could be read as pre-het if you're so inclined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Problem Halved

He's not surprised when the doorbell rings, and he knows who it is without having to check. He's been expecting her, actually, ever since he walked out of that interview room. He tried to stick it out, to keep his emotions in check and stay professional, but the more they'd uncovered about what had really happened to Dylan, the angrier he'd become, until he'd had to leave or hit something, and he could only imagine the trouble he'd have caused if he'd chosen the latter.

For a while he'd thought that she might simply call him rather than drive over, and had even considered leaving the machine on just in case, but he's never known Catherine take the easy option in anything, and there's no reason to think that she'll start now.

Strangely, a part of him is pleased that he was right in spite of the circumstances, but that doesn't mean he wants company. Nick is still trying to decide whether to answer the door as he walks over to it, and after a moment of brief indecision he sighs quietly, reaches out and opens the door.

She's standing nervously on the other side, and there's a moment of awkward silence before he manages to pull together a pathetically weak smile and step back to allow her through the doorway into the darkened room. She matches his smile with one of her own, and there's such feeling, such concern in her expression for a moment that he can feel his heart breaking and his tentative composure start to slip. He wants to reassure her, to pull her into his arms and tell her that he's okay, that he came to terms with what happened to him a long time ago, but instead he says nothing. His feelings for her are too strong to sully them with memories of the past, and besides, he's never seen anything in her behavior towards him that makes Nick think she could see him as anything more than a work colleague or a friend.

At least, nothing that can't be dismissed as the unrealistic hopes of a misguided, unrequited desire.

He conceals his thoughts from her as he shuts the door, locking it automatically and trying desperately to calm his nerves before forcing himself to turn and face her.

She's watching him, her expression now calm and composed, and as he moves away from the door he notices that she's still in her work clothes.

"Um, can I get you a coffee?" he asks, wincing inwardly at how hoarse his voice sounds. 

Suddenly it's Catherine's turn to seem embarrassed, and she glances away for just a second before replying. "Got anything stronger?"

Nick nods mutely, gesturing her towards the kitchen. It's only then that he realizes how dark it has become. The apartment is bathed in shadows, only the dim light from his computer and a weak streetlight outside one window doing anything to combat the darkness. Nick frowned, detouring slightly to switch on a lamp. How long had it been since the light faded? He was sure it had been daylight outside when he arrived home from work.

He follows quickly after her and pulls two beers from the fridge, handing her a bottle before spending the next few minutes looking for the opener. It's only when he hears a strange sound and a small, metallic bottle top skitters past him in the counter that he glances up. Catherine's taking a long, slow drink from the bottle, and it's his turn to watch, until she glances up and catches sight of his gaze. He can feel himself blushing, until the bottle top catches his eye again and he frowns, confused. Catherine laughs at his expression, tapping the neck of the bottle gently against her forehead.

"I was a dancer, remember?"

Nick can feel himself blushing slightly, only too well aware of her former profession. It shows in her body even through a formal business suit, in the way she carries herself and the toned figure that would be the envy of a woman half her age. No, he hasn't forgotten.

"Listen," he begins suddenly, anxious to fill the silence that has again fallen between them. "I'm sorry about today. I shouldn't have shut you out."

"It's okay," she says, reaching out and resting a hand on his arm for a second. "You didn't need to put yourself through that, Nick. Grissom would have reassigned you if you'd asked."

Nick sighs, "Catherine, I've kept what happened to me a secret for 23 years. If you had to choose someone to tell for the first time, would it be Grissom?"

"Probably not," Catherine leans back against the counter, studying him for a second before continuing. Nick breaks the gaze again and looks away, uncomfortable under the intense scrutiny. "Dr. Sapien will go to prison, Nick. They'll take her license away this time. She won't be able to hurt anyone else."

Again he can feel his shaky control slipping, the emotion he's been fighting since they first found those fibers on Dylan's clothes threatening to flood back, to overwhelm him.

His fingers tighten on the beer bottle, and he watches, disconnected, as his knuckles begin to turn white. "It's not enough," he finally manages to say, his voice little more than a whisper. It's a wonder she can hear him at all, and as he risks one more look at her and sees the concern in her eyes, the sympathetic pity that she can't even try to hide, it's enough to finally break the dam of his emotions.

At the first sensation of tears slipping from his eyes he turns away again, angry at his own weakness. Abandoning Catherine in the kitchen he flees into the living room, shoulders shaking from the effort of not breaking down completely. He can't let Catherine see him like this, not when he'd managed to hold himself together, if barely, long enough to tell her in the first place. Wasn't that supposed to have been the hardest thing? He drops wearily onto the sofa, quickly wiping away the tears before running his hand through his hair and taking a deep breath. A few seconds of calm and he'd like to believe that it's over, that he's found that elusive control again, but he's all too well aware that the hands he returns to his lap are shaking badly, and in the end he clenches them into fists, nails digging painfully into the palms of his hands.

Nick has no idea how long he sits there, his focus narrowed to simply taking one breath after another, before he's aware of the sofa dipping beside him. Catherine sits down next to him, one hand resting lightly on his back. He tenses at the contact, aware that his tears are still silently falling and there's nothing he can do to stop them. He waits for the platitudes to start, for her to shush him or tell him that she understands, but the words don't come. Instead she just tightens her grip, gently drawing him closer and Nick acquiesces, leaning wearily towards her until they're sitting shoulder to shoulder.

At first the physical contact feels wrong, echoes of the past and the contact he'd neither invited or enjoyed skittering across his overanxious mind, and for a brief moment his instinct is to push her away, to run as far and as fast as he can. But just as quickly the urge to run fades, and as he angrily forces the memories away he becomes aware of other things. A faint smell of perfume, and underneath it all another scent that he can identify simply as Catherine, all too familiar to him after months of working close together.

Her warmth comforts him, grounding him, and he's so relieved that she's not offering him meaningless platitudes, that she seems somehow to know precisely what he needs to hear, that in this moment Nick knows he'd have fallen in love with her if it wasn't already too late.

The tears continue to fall, but slowly Nick realizes that he is no longer embarrassed, isn't ashamed that Catherine is here, holding him while he cries. Instead he simply closes his eyes, letting himself finally relax for the first time since he walked out of that interview room.

The house is silent except for the quiet tick of a clock on the wall behind him and the harsh rasp of his breathing, echoing in his head. Gradually the tears stop but Nick doesn't move and neither does she, and together they sit in a silence that he no longer finds threatening.

"Thank you," he whispers softly, and Catherine tightens her hold for just a second in reply, but still makes no attempt to pull away. Finally it's Nick who moves first, shifting slightly in his seat and Catherine immediately lets go. Ignoring the feeling of loss that accompanies her release, Nick turns to face her and is shocked to see that Catherine's eyes are threatening to spill tears of her own.

"Hey," he admonishes softly, reaching up hesitantly to brush them away. Catherine closes her eyes as his fingers brush her cheeks.

"I'm sorry," she speaks quietly, capturing his hands in hers. "I'm sorry you had to go through that."

In spite of himself Nick smiles, squeezing her hands in return. "I meant what I said at the office. It's part of the reason I do this job. I wouldn't wish what happened to me on anyone, and it might not seem like it right now, but I am okay. I'll never forget that it happened, Catherine, but I don't always think about it. I just...every so often something reminds me of it. A certain perfume, or a phrase maybe...I doubt that will ever change."

"Why didn't you ever tell anyone?"

"I'm not sure," he answers honestly, hesitating for a second. "I was scared, and ashamed I guess. After she...after it happened I just wanted mom, wanted to cling to her until she made the hurt go away. But when she finally came home I just couldn't find the words. I mean, how do you tell someone something like that? Especially when she was the one who'd arranged the babysitter. Knowing what that woman had done would have destroyed her."

"So you didn't say anything."

"I was still going to. I stayed awake all that night, imagining the words I'd use, and believing that all I had to do was get the words out and she'd make it better. When it came down to it, I could never find the right time, and the longer I waited, the harder it became. In the end, I had to make the decision to say nothing."

Nick trails off, reaching for his beer bottle again and rolling the glass between his fingers, staring down at the floor. He's half expecting her to ask the obvious question, the one he's asked himself regularly for over twenty years. The thought haunts him that he probably wasn't the only one, that she could have abused others before and since, and that he could have stopped her if only he'd said something. The CSI in him knows that it's too late, that the statute of limitations ran out a long time ago, and even if it hadn't, the lack of DNA evidence makes a conviction highly unlikely. Still he wonders, and although he knows what he'd have had to go through if he'd gone public, what his family would have gone through, with no guarantees of a conviction at the end of it, part of him still regrets his silence.

"I'm glad you felt that you could tell me," Catherine says quietly, and Nick answers without thinking.

"You asked." What was it they said? That it was hardest to lie to the people you cared about? Something like that, and in that moment in the corridor, with Catherine calling after him demanding explanations she wasn't ready to hear, Nick had known. Even before he'd turned round, he'd known that there was no way he could lie to her face. He cared for her too much. Of course, he'd lied to his parents for most of his life, but that was a lie of omission, and it was easier to pretend that none of it had ever happened when no-one suspected it in the first place. Catherine had asked the right questions. "Besides," he continues, "after I almost screwed up the case, you deserved an answer."

"We got her, Nick. You didn't screw up anything."

"I was so sure she'd been abusing him," Nick continues as if he hasn't heard her. "So certain that it was happening all over again. I ignored all the evidence, disregarded procedure..."

Catherine's hand on his arm is enough to stop him mid flow. "Fibers on his underwear? Her previous record of sex with an underage patient? I jumped to the same conclusions you did. It might not have been sexual abuse, Nick, but what they did to Dylan was still abusive."

A thought suddenly occurs to him and he turns to her in alarm, heart catching in his throat. "Don't tell Grissom," he pleads. "If he has to know then I'll tell him, but I don't want this made public."

"I won't say anything," she assures him. "This is nobody's business but yours."

"Thank you."

She smiles and he leans back against the sofa, taking another swig of the beer bottle that's still over half full. The clock behind them both begins to chime, and Nick glances reflexively at his watch, startled to realize how late it's getting.

"Where's Lindsay?"

Catherine laughs. "Sleepover. Thankfully she's still at the age where sleepovers are an exciting treat. She's much more forgiving of the late hours I work than I am."

Nick thinks back to the few times he's met Lindsay, to the bubbly child he remembers. "She's a good kid. You should be proud of her."

Catherine's face breaks into a wide smile, eyes lighting up just as they always do when she thinks of her daughter.

"I am."

Catherine takes Nick's cue to change the subject, settling back next to him against the sofa and continuing to talk about her daughter, about Lindsay's newest best friend and the traumas of the midterm school projects. Nick laughs along with her, slowly beginning to relegate the last difficult few days firmly into the past. 

This wasn't the first time that he'd been involved in a child abuse case since becoming a CSI, and sadly he knows it won't be the last. He'll get through this, just like he always has, but this time he doesn't think it'll take as long.

Not with Catherine by his side.


End file.
